After Samuel Tadros blew the whistle on First Lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry’s plans to honor a vicious anti-Semite, Hitler-quoting, 9/11 celebrating, anti-American conspiracy theorist, the State Department backtracked and deferred the award, blaming the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for the poor vetting. Lee Smith has a useful summary of that issue, here. He writes:
It is unfair that the American embassy in Cairo is taking most of the blame for the [Samira] Ibrahim affair. Yes, they should’ve done a better job of vetting her before sending her name on to Washington. To get a read on Ibrahim’s political positions, all embassy staff had to do was check with some of Egypt’s genuine liberal activists, like those who since the story broke have criticized her vicious opinions, or like Samuel Tadros, or Mina Rezkalla and Amr Bargisi, or anyone from the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth. But that hardly excuses management at Foggy Bottom, who should have smelled something fishy at the outset…
That is certainly right, but it only scratches the surface. Something is very rotten at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo which was, until the 2003 Iraq War, the largest U.S. embassy in the world. “Samiragate” is the rule rather than the exception. Remember, after an Egyptian-American posted on YoutTube the trailer for an amateurish film mocking the Prophet Muhammad, the embassy overruled the State Department and tweeted apologies to the militants attacking the embassy. Public affairs officer Larry Schwartz became the fall guy for that episode, but he merely reflected the culture the embassy cultivated.
Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, is a career foreign service officer who has led the embassy since 2010. She has set the tone for the embassy’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Explaining why Mohamed Morsi deserved American F-16 fighters, despite an increasing disdain for the rule of law and revelations about his hateful incitement, Patterson declared Morsi deserved the weaponry so Egypt can “continue to serve as a force for peace, security, and leadership as the Middle East proceeds with its challenging yet essential journey toward democracy.”
Here’s the kicker: Guess who seems to be a finalist under Secretary of State John Kerry for a promotion to become assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs? That’s right, Anne Patterson. If Samiragate was truly the result of incompetence, then Patterson could use her new position to bring that quality to the broader Middle East. Conversely, if it really was illustrative of the cultural and political bubble that Patterson imbued or let develop in her staff, then get ready for several more years of self-inflicted wounds.
Just dumb and dumber.
we, the people, in electing and tolerating this regime, seem to be the dummies
everything Obama/the White House says, is posturing n ntheir professed positions are meant to mislead, n nwhile Barry does whatever he or his handlers want to do n n
The Department of State is rotten from top to bottom. Social attitudes at State, once in a category with those of a reactionary white shoe law firm, have melted down into harebrained liberal internationalism. Only its hostility to Jews and the State of Israel whose foundation State vehemently opposed remains unchanged. n nThe department of State is functionally and institutionally anti-Semitic. n n
The turds float to the top in the liberal establishment. No useful skills but all that extruded PC waste product has excellent career navigational buoyancy.
Are you trying to say our foreign policy is in the toilet?
lol
It once was that posting to London, Moscow or Paris was the fast path up the ladder of the State Department. Now it seems shilling for the Muslim Brotherhood out of the Cairo office is the posting of choice for the politically ambitious. I was going to say Tripoli but "What does it matter anymore!"
with a prezident called Hussain, what do you expect? n nBayonce and Jay-z moving into the White House? n n
I know it can't really be blamed on John Kerry, but it seems somehow fitting that his segue to the State Department was enlivened by this fiasco. No doubt it was a preview of things to come under a Secretary of State who's as clueless as the department he heads.
Foggy Bottom is full of people with BIASES and softening Brain, if they even have one. Who are the enemies of Egypt that justify the F-16s? Libya? Sudan? Erythrea? Ethiopia? Rhodes, Cypress? I am at a loss! We need to keep the US factories working and produce more free F-16s!